A paradox has settled across California’s velvet green fields and orchards. California farmers, who are some of the most ardent supporters of Donald Trump, would seem to be on a collision course with one of the president-elect’s most important campaign promises.
Trump has pledged to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country, including, he has said in recent days, rounding up people and putting them in newly built detention camps.
If any such effort penetrated California’s heartland — where half the fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S. are grown — it almost surely would decimate the workforce that farmers rely on to plant and harvest their crops. At least half of the state’s 162,000 farmworkers are undocumented, according to estimates from the federal Department of Labor and research conducted by UC Merced. Without sufficient workers, food would rot in the fields, sending grocery prices skyrocketing.
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Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, did not respond to questions about agricultural workers specifically, but said: “The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, like deporting migrant criminals and restoring our economic greatness. He will deliver.”
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Fresno County farmer Joe Del Bosque says it’s still unclear what the Trump administration has planned for undocumented farmworkers. But he said he has concerns.
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In the past, Del Bosque has been active in advocating for immigration reform, including the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would have revised the H-2A visa program and created a certified agricultural worker status, to provide eligible laborers with employment authorization and an optional path to residency.
This time around, Del Bosque wants to send a message directly to Trump.
“A country can’t be strong if it doesn’t have a reliable food supply,” Del Bosque said, “and we can’t do that without a reliable workforce.”
How, exactly? What are they going to be able to do to save them from all of their produce rotting in their fields as it goes unharvested? That’s not really something you can fix with a bit of a bail-out. Even if they just hand them buckets of cash, they’re going to have a food shortage to contend with.
Trump won’t be able to deport anyone without the assistance of local and state law enforcement and California is never going to collaborate on that.